<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Censorship',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/08/12.jpg" alt="Why is this turn cut off from the main road?" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<h3>Part Zero</h3>
		<p>
			I&apos;d have to say that of the three philosophers we studied this week, I liked Paulo Freire best.
			He recognised that no education system could exist without by its very nature pushing an agenda.
			You can&apos;t teach everything.
			Ignoring the problem of limited time, many ideas even conflict with one another.
			While the hope is that education will lead you to become a productive member of society, the simple fact is that it does involve a measure of ... manipulation, for lack of a better word.
			On a base level, teachers have particular desires of what their students become, but such choices in what to teach usually reach even deeper, with higher-ups at the school or even government officials having most of the say as to what will be allowed, or even mandatory, in the curriculum.
		</p>
		<p>
			In most cases, the education system seeks to get us to conform to society&apos;s norms, even when those norms are toxic.
			However, education can also seek to inspire reform.
			No matter which you see as the positive option and which the negative, <strong>*both*</strong> are agendas being pushed.
			There is no education without an agenda.
			It simply isn&apos;t possible.
			Freire also recognised that a culture that promotes or demands silence is a culture that is oppressive.
		</p>
		<p>
			I think my most interesting interaction of the term was the discussion last week.
			So many people seemed to be under the impression that without a god, there could be no morality.
			It really made me sad, but also a bit fearful.
			As an ethical atheist, I can say that it is without a doubt possible to have morality without a god.
			But I assume people are speaking from personal experience.
			Does that mean most of the students in this class are <strong>*not*</strong> able to behave morally without fear of a god?
			If the students in this class didn&apos;t believe in a god, would most of you be out there raping and murdering?
			Personally, I hope you all just underestimate yourselves, or didn&apos;t actually think that through.
			I&apos;d like to think that at least most of you are good people and aren&apos;t just pretending to be good because you don&apos;t want your god to smite you.
		</p>
		<h3>Part One</h3>
		<p>
			I used to share what I&apos;d learned in class, but I received a threatening letter from the school warning me not to do that any more.
			As a result, nothing I do in this course or any other course at this school ever comes up in conversation anywhere outside the school.
			I&apos;m under censorship; there&apos;s nothing I can do about it for the time being.
		</p>
		<p>
			This course has also been very centred on Christianity.
			As a result, almost none of it applies to me, as an atheist.
			I&apos;ve actually been very disappointed that this hasn&apos;t been a religion-neutral course.
			The topic of philosophy isn&apos;t strictly about religion, and as this was supposedly an introductory course, I assumed we&apos;d be starting with basics that applied to everyone.
			I didn&apos;t expect this to be such a Christian-oriented course, where nearly every topic would be either directly about Yahweh or would be discussed within the context of Yahweh.
		</p>
		<p>
			One of the few topics we discussed without a necessarily-Christian outlook was that of categorical imperatives.
			With the concept of categorical imperatives, Kant attempted to distil the inherently-subjective concept of morality into something objective.
			I think he came about as close as is possible, but even categorical imperatives are subjective.
			What I see as an imperative you might not, and vice versa.
			A great example of this would be one of my own categorical imperatives: do not, under any circumstances, have children.
			By creating children, you&apos;re necessarily sentencing them to die; after all, no one lives forever.
			That means that you and your sexual partner are necessarily the only two causes of your children&apos;s deaths.
			Something else might cause them to die ahead of schedule, but they&apos;ll die either way.
			For example, if you get run over by a car and die, the car didn&apos;t cause your death, because you were already going to die.
			The car only moved your eventual death to a sooner point in time.
			Parents are the cause of <strong>*everyone&apos;s*</strong> death, with absolutely no exceptions.
		</p>
		<p>
			Being the cause of my children&apos;s deaths isn&apos;t something I can live with.
			Furthermore, the world is already overpopulated and humans are damaging the planet.
			I don&apos;t need to add to the problem by adding more people to the planet.
			So can I get behind making not having children a universal law?
			Yes, I absolutely can.
			Our species would die out; we&apos;d be the first species to choose our own extinction.
			After that, there would be no more human deaths ever, because there would be no more humans.
			As an added benefit, the planet would begin to recover from most of the damage we&apos;ve caused.
			I&apos;m not the only one who thinks we should let ourselves die out, either.
			There&apos;s an entire movement called the <a href="http://vhemt.org/">Voluntary Human Extinction Movement</a>.
		</p>
		<p>
			Clearly though, most people disagree with my categorical imperative, even despite the immense harm creating human babies causes to the planet.
			And I disagree with some of the categorical imperatives of others.
			Clearly, even categorical imperatives are subjective.
			However, learning about the concept of them helped my crystallise and refine my thought processes.
			On some level, I&apos;ve been operating according to something very similar to categorical imperatives for most of my life.
			I act the way I would want everyone else to act.
			Kant&apos;s concept of categorical imperatives has allowed me to go back and examine some of my beliefs though, and give them the justification they deserve.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Wikiwand. (n.d.). Paulo Freire | Wikiwand. Retrieved from <a href="https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Paulo_Freire"><code>https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Paulo_Freire</code></a>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="Minetest">
	<h2>Minetest</h2>
	<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_3.0/minetest.net./weblog/2018/08/12.png" alt="Going down" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="600"/>
	<p>
		I think I&apos;ve decided against building that meta-based recipe definition library.
		It&apos;d be inefficient compared to hard-coding the logic into the relevant mods.
		This is something that should eventually be supported by the engine anyway.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
